The End of Creation

All things were created for Him. — COLOSSIANS i. 16.

ETHEN Ulysses returned with fond anticipations to his home in Ithaca, his family did not recognise him. Even the wife of his bosom denied her husband — so changed was he by an absence of twenty years, and the hardships of a long-protracted war. It was thus true of the vexed and astonished Greek as of a nobler King, that he came unto his own, and his own received him not. In this painful position of affairs he called for a bow which he had left at home, when, embarking for the siege of Troy, he bade farewell to the orange-groves and vine-clad hills of Ithaca. With characteristic sagacity, he saw how a bow, so stout and tough that none but himself could draw it, might be made to bear witness on his behalf. He seized it. To their surprise and joy, like a green wand lopped from a willow-tree, it yields to his arms; it bends till the bow-string touches his ear. His wife, now sure that he is her long lost and long lamented husband, throws herself into his fond embraces, and his household confess him the true Ulysses.

If I may compare small things with great, our Lord gave such proof of his divinity when he too stood a stranger in his own house, despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. He bent the stubborn laws of nature to his will. He proved himself Creator by his mastery over creation. The winds that sweep the deep, and the free wild sea they sweep alike controlled, leprosy and shaking palsy healed, the rolling eye of madness calmed, the shrouded corpse and the buried dead restored to life by a word, calmly spoken after the manner and with the power of a master — these things leave one to wonder that the spectators did not fall down to worship; and, recognising God in the guise of man, say, The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. If nothing could be more sublime than that scene on the Lake of Galilee, when, tranquil in aspect, Jesus stood on the bow of the reeling boat, and while the storm played around, and the spray flew in white sheets over his naked head, calmly eyed the war of elements, and raising his hand, said, “Peace, be still! “could any thing be more conclusive than the evidence which these waves and winds afforded, that the Master himself was come home? No clearer shone the stars that night, mirrored in the placid waters. There, the winds lulled and the wild waves at rest, deep silence spake. By that sudden hush, nature proclaimed him God, Lord, Creator of all. Declared to be so by inspired tongues, and by such strange witnesses as winds and waves, devils, disease, death, and the grave — heaven concurs in their testimony; by the voices of its saints and angels, of its worship, hymns, harps, and hallelujahs, proclaiming him Creator and Lord of all.

Let us in imagination pass the angel guardians of those gates where no error enters, and, entering that upper sanctuary which no discord divides, no heresy disturbs, let us find out who worship, and who is wor shipped there. The law, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve, extends to heaven as well as to earth; so that if our Lord is only the highest of all creatures, we shall find him on his knees — not the worshipped, but a worshipper; and from his lofty, and lonely, and to other creatures unapproachable pinnacle, looking up to God, as does the highest of the snow-crowned Alps to the sun, that, shining far above it, bathes its head in light. We have sought him, I shall suppose, in that group where his mother sits with the other Marys, sought him among the twelve apostles, or where the chief of apostles reasons with angels on things profound, or where David, royal leader of the heavenly choir, strikes his harp, or where the beggar, enjoying the repose of Abraham’s bosom, forgets his wrongs, or where martyrs and confessors, and they which have come out of great tribulation, with robes of purest white, and crowns of brightest glory, swell the song of salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. He is not there. Rising upwards, we seek him where angels hover on wings of light, or, with feet and faces veiled, bend before a throne of dazzling glory. Nor is he there. He does not belong to their company. Verily, he took not on him the nature of angels.

Eighteen hundred years ago Mary is rushing through the streets of Jerusalem, speed in her steps, wild anxiety in her look, one question to all on her eager lips, “Have you seen my son?” Eighteen hundred years ago, on these same streets, some Greeks accost a Galilean fisherman, saying, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Now, were we, bent like his mother on finding, like these Greeks on seeing him, to stay a passing angel, and accost him in the words, “Sir, we would see Jesus,” what would he do? How would his arm rise, and his finger point us upward to the throne as he fell down to worship, and worshipping, to swell that flood of song which in this one full stream mingles the names of the Father, and of the Son — Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever. Such a glorious vision, such worship, the voices that sounded on John’s ear as the voice of many waters, the distant roar of ocean, are in perfect harmony with the exalted honour and divine offices which Paul assigns to our Lord in the words, All things were created for him.

In directing your attention now to the purpose for which Christ created all things, I remark —

I. That my text furnishes another proof of our Lord’s divinity.

He is in the position of a servant who works for others; he of a master, who by other hands, or his own, works for himself. Applying that remark to the case before us, look to the condition of man. Whatever office man fills in providence, he is a servant; and on crowned monarchs, who are, and should consider them selves, but upper servants, as well as on the lowest menials, Paul lays this duty, Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. God being our end, as well as our beginning, we are to do nothing for ourselves; but everything for him. Nor do angels, though holding a much higher rank in creation, differ much from us in this respect. Far from it. Even as we see that law which rolls every drop of water to the ocean, and rounds the tear on our cheek, illustrated on its grandest scale in those skies where suns roll, and stars rise, and wandering comets travel, so, if we would see the law of love producing perfect service, and per feet servants, we must look to heaven. Nor wing flies, nor harp sounds, nor heart beats yonder, but in divine harmony with the great law of God’s moral kingdom, Do all to the glory of God. They are all and ever engaged in God’s service. Hear what is said of them, “He shall give his angels charge over thee,” “I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify,” “See thou do it not,” said the angel, “for I am thy fellow-servant,” “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” Thus, whether they descend on our world to open the bars of a prison, or to roll back the gates of the sea, to predict the birth of a Samson, or celebrate the advent of a Saviour, to blow the coal that dresses Elijah’s meal, or kindle the fire that lays Sodom in ashes, to sing “peace” over the rude cradle of a new-born babe, or sound the trump that rends the tomb and wakes the dead, they do nothing for themselves. Not ashamed of their service, but glorying in it, they respond to the call, Bless the Lord, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word. Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his that do his pleasure.

Now, whose pleasure does my text represent our Lord as doing? For whom, in the work of creation, does it represent him as acting? All things were created not only by him, but for him. For him! What a depth of meaning, what a manifest divinity, in that plain, little word! “For him!” You might pile one lofty expression on another up to heaven, but you could say nothing more of God. Nay, it is said of God, as his own peculiar and divine prerogative, “The Lord hath made all things for himself.”

Some have attempted to evade the argument for Christ’s divinity, which is based on the fact of his having created all things. They cannot deny the fact, but they deny the inference. They object and allege that, although Christ created all things, he did so not by his own inherent power, but by such power as Elijah received from God to restore the widow’s son, or Elisha to lay bare the bed of Jordan. But, apart from other answers with which such objectors may be triumphantly met, observe how my text cuts the ground out below their feet. Did Elijah bring back the dead, and his successor divide the flood for themselves? Was it for their own glory, or for any other ends of their own ‘? That will not be alleged. If not, then there is no analogy whatever between their miraculous and our Lord’s creating works.

If our Lord Jesus Christ was other and less than God, then, in kindling yonder sun, in lighting up the starry sky, he no more acted for himself than the domestic does, who, appearing at my call, lights my lamp, or stoops on the hearth-stone to kindle my fire. It is the very nature of a creature to be a dependant, and hold a servant’s place. Nor, as I read my Bible, was any man ever more justly condemned to die than Jesus, if he were but a man. In that case he did undoubtedly lay himself open to the charge of blasphemy, since — as the Jews truly averred, and he never denied, nor so much as attempted to explain it away — he made him self the Son of God, “equal with God.” No doubt our Lord did that; in such plain terms claiming divine equality as to justify the use by Paul of this bold language, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. And, as the rainbow looks the brighter the blacker the cloud it spans, the majesty of his claim is brought out by the meanness of the circumstances in which it was made. Deserted by the world, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, dependent on a few humble followers for the most common necessaries of life, within some hours of an ignominious end, his foot already on the verge of the grave, he rises to the loftiness of Godhead; and, turning an eye that was to be soon darkened in death on earth and heaven, he claims a community of property with God. All things, he says, that the Father hath are mine. To the “all mine are thine,” this dying man adds, “thine are mine.” He speaks to God. Thine, thy eternity, thy throne, thy glory, thy crown, thy sceptre, all are mine. Great words, pregnant with the strongest consolation and most glorious truths! For, if in the very nature of things all that is God’s is Christ’s, and according to the terms of the New Covenant, all that is Christ’s is ours, these words draw everything that belongs to God into the hands of the humblest believer. What a faith is that! What comfort should it give you! What courage should it impart to you! What gratitude should it beget in you! Rich amid poverty, full in emptiness, and in weakness strong, with what blessed peace may the believer lie in Christ’s arms, saying with David, I will fear none evil; or with Paul, as he addresses himself to work or war, I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

II. My text teaches us that the glory of God was the original purpose of creation; “All things were created — for him.”

Sin has to some extent blighted the beauty of creation. Still, to borrow the words of the Psalmist, The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handy-work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. Nor is it distance that here lends enchantment to the view. On the contrary, the more closely the works of God are examined, the higher our admiration rises; and the less we fear that true science will ever appear as the antagonist, and not the ally of the faith. Whether we turn the telescope on heavens studded so full of stars as to present the appearance of gold-dust scattered with lavish hand on a dark purple ground — or turn the microscope on such comparatively humble objects as a plant of moss, a drop of ditch water, the scaly armour of a beetle, a spider’s eye, the down of a feather, or the dust on a butterfly’s wing, such divine beauty, wisdom, and glory, burst into view, that childhood’s roving mind is instantly arrested. The dullest are moved to wonder, the most grovelling souls take wing and rise up to God. He rushes, indeed, into our souls by the open portal of every sense. We see a divine glory in worms, and unapproachable excellence in the Almighty’s lowest works. And in the grand roar of the storm, the everlasting boom of ocean breakers, the sudden crash and far-rolling peals of thunder, the soft murmuring of gentle brooks, the gleesome melody of budding woods, the thrilling music of the lark, as, like a parting spirit, she spurns the earth and wings her flight to heaven, nature echoes the close of the angel’s hymn, The whole earth is full of his glory.

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy over our new-born world, that, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory, formed, perhaps, the burden of their song. And when Adam sat by his beautiful bride, and the shaggy lion crouched like a dog at their feet, and the beams of the setting sun threw a golden splendour over their bower of eglantine and roses, and the feathered tribes from all the groves of paradise poured forth rich gushes of sweetest melody, perhaps, ere they lay down to rest with their arms and hearts entwined, they took it for their vesper-hymn, singing, while God and delighted angels listened, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.

The harp of Eden, alas! is broken. Unstrung and mute, an exiled race have hung it on the willows; and Ichabod stands written now in the furrows of man’s guilty forehead and on the wreck of his ruined estate. Some things remain unaffected by the blight of sin, as God made them for himself; the flowers have lost neither their bloom nor fragrance; the rose smells as sweet as it did when bathed in the dews of paradise; and seas and seasons, obedient to their original impulse, roll on as of old to their Maker’s glory. But from man, alas! how is the glory departed! Look at his body when the light of the eye is quenched, and the countenance is changed, and the noble form lies festering in corruption — mouldering into the dust of death. Or, change still more hideous, look at his soul! The spirit of piety dead, the mind under a dark eclipse, hatred to God rankling in that once loving heart, it retains but some vestiges of its original grandeur; just enough, like the beautiful tracery and noble arches of a ruined pile, to make us feel what glory once was there, and now is gone. What glory does God get from many of us? Like a son who is bringing his father’s grey hairs to the grave, a daughter who, sunk into the lowest degradation, is the shame of her family, we are a dishonour and a disgrace. In applying such terms to sinners, I am not employing language too strong. God uses still stronger terms. As if his were the feelings of a father who wishes that he had been childless, of a mother who esteems the barren happy, it is written, “It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” What a horrible thing is sin!

Yet God’s object in creating man was not defeated; and in illustration of that, I remark —

III. That God will make even the wicked and their sins redound to his glory.

A strange machine is this of providence! How slowly some wheels move, while others whirl round so rapidly that the eye cannot catch the flying spokes: some are turning in one direction, and others in the very opposite. Here, sight to wonder at, Virtue is struggling with the temptations of poverty, and Piety sits a mendicant, clothed in rags, and covered with a mass of sores. There, again, we see the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree; and not seldom like the deadly upas, which is said to poison the air around it, and kill all that comes

R within its noxious shade. In the arrangements of this world it often seems as if confusion reigned, and some times confusion worse confounded. Sin triumphs, and in the success of the ungodly, who have no changes, and no bands in their death, men and devils seem to defeat the purposes of God.

Defeat the purposes of God! Impossible. As you stood some stormy day upon a sea-cliff, and marked the giant billow rise from the deep to rush on with foaming crest, and throw itself thundering on the trembling shore, did you ever fancy that you could stay its course, and hurl it back into the depths of ocean? Did you ever stand beneath the leaden lowering cloud, and mark the lightning’s leap, as it shot and flashed, dazzling, athwart the gloom, and think that you could grasp the bolt and change its path? Still more foolish and vain his thought, who fancies that he can arrest or turn aside the purposes of God, saying, What is the Almighty that we should serve him? Let us break his bands in sunder, and cast away his cords from us. Break his bands asunder! How he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh! Poor, beguiled, benighted sinner, do you suppose, that in the full swing and unbridled license of your passions you are serving yourself, are your own free master? Be assured that it is not otherwise with you than it was with Pilate, and the chief priests, and the Jews, and Judas also. Unconscious of the high hand that controlled their movements, these enemies of God were gathered together to do that which, by the deterrninate counsel and foreknowledge of God, was appointed to be done.

Do you, for instance, injure a godly man? God is using you to train up his child in the grace of patience. Do you defraud him? God is using you to detach his heart from the world, and to loosen the roots that bind his affections to the earth. Do you deceive him? God is using you to teach him not to put his trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. Do you wound his feelings? You are a knife in God’s hand to let the sap flow more freely in a bark-bound tree, or to prune its branches that it may bring forth more fruit. Messenger of Satan! dost thou buffet an apostle? God uses thee to keep him humble, and to teach him to wear his honours meekly. Oppressor of the church! dost thou cast an apostle into prison? God uses thee, thy dungeon, and thy chains, to show how he will answer prayer, and bring his people eventually out of their sorest troubles, — saving, as he saved Peter, at the very uttermost. King of Egypt! with thy guards around thee, flattered by thy supple courtiers, backed by thy boastful magicians, with thy haughty looks art thou thwarting God, and, in hardening thy heart and refusing to let Israel go, promoting and securing thine own ambitious, selfish, grasping ends? Fool, what a mistake! In very deed, said the Lord by Mcses, for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth. Pharaoh’s obstinacy affords the occasion, of which God makes use, to turn a great kingdom into a stage whereon to display the majesty of his power. What must have been the surprise, what the rage, what the mortification of that imperious tyrant, to find himself, after all that he and his bleeding country had suffered, but a mere tool in the hands of the Hebrew’s God! God took a revenue of glory out of him, as he will sooner or later do out of all his enemies.

No man liveth for himself. There is a sense in which that is universally true. And the most bold and God-hating sinners may rest assured that when the complicated machine of providence has done its work, and the secret purposes of God are fully completed, and things old and worn out are replaced by a new heaven and a new earth, then it shall be seen how the Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. Oh that men would turn now and seek his mercy, — his gracious, much-needed, freelyoffered, all-sufficient, soul-saving mercy. Kiss the Son lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way. Why, when God is willing to forgive and forget, why, when he has sent his Son to seek you, and sends his Spirit to plead with you, why should you perish? Reject salvation, and you must perish. For, though unbelievers and the wicked are after a fashion serving God, it is as the rod which a kind father reluctantly uses to chasten his son, and which, when it has answered its purpose, he breaks in two, and casts into the fire.

IV. Since Christ hath made all things for himself, his people are emphatically called to consecrate them selves, and their all, to his glory.

To this duty you are called, by the obligations of both a natural and spiritual creation; by your descent from the first, and also from the second Adam. To live, to watch, to work, to suffer, and to sacrifice both for Him who, loving us, spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, and for Him also who, loving us, washed us from our sins in his own blood, is our plain bounden duty; let me rather say, for duty is a cold word, should be our daily and supreme delight. I do not say that it is plain sailing to heaven. I do not say but that the duty we owe to Christ may and shall expose us to what the world accounts, and what flesh and blood feel, to be pain? Be it so! What pains Jesus endured, what sacrifices he submitted to for us!

Besides, how should it make us take suffering joy fully to think that it is those who are crucified with him on earth that shall be crowned with him in heaven. None else. They win in this game that lose. They live in this warfare that die. If we be dead with him, we shall also live writh him; if we suffer, we shall also reign with him. He that loseth his life shall find it.

Surely, if there be such things as true, tender, sacred, eternal obligations, they bind those who, to speak the plain truth, but for Christ had been suffering hell’s in tolerable torment, had never even hoped to set foot in heaven. What owest thou thy Lord? You cannot tell that. Therefore be your money millions or mites, be your talents ten or two, be your hearts young and green, or scared and withered, lay them at a Saviour’s feet. Let his glory be your glorious aim! Kaised far above the common objects and base pursuits of the world, this is an end worth living for. A life such as that, elevating and ennobling the humblest lot, shall command the regards, and fix on a man the gaze of angels. Lofty ends give dignity to the lowest offices. It is, for instance, an honest, but you would not call it an honourable occupation to pull an oar; yet if that oar dips in a yeasty sea to impel the life-boat over mountain waves and through roaring breakers, he who has stripped for the venture, and, breaking away from weeping wife and praying mother and clinging children, has bravely thrown himself into the boat to pull for yonder wreck, and pluck his drowning brothers from the jaws of death, presents, as from time to time we catch a glimpse of him on the crest of the foaming billow, a spectacle of grandeur which would withdraw our eyes from the presence even of a queen, surrounded with all the blaze and glittering pomp of royalty.

Take another illustration, drawn from yet humbler life. Some years ago, on a winter morning, two children were found frozen to death. They were sisters. The elder child had the younger seated in her lap, closely folded within her lifeless arms. She had stripped her own thinly-clad form to protect its feebler life, and, to warm the icy fingers, bad tenderly placed its little hands in her own bosom; and pitying men and weeping women did stand and gaze on the two dead creatures, as, with glassy eyes and stiffened forms, they reclined upon the snow wreath — the days of their wandering and mourning ended, and heaven’s own pure snow no purer than that true sister’s love. They were orphans; houseless, homeless beggars. But not on that account, had I been there to gaze on that touching group, would I have shed one tear the less, or felt the less deeply, that it was a display of true love, and of human nature in its least fallen aspect, which deserved to be embalmed in poetry, and sculptured in costliest marble.

Yes; and however humble the Christian’s walk, or mean his occupation, it matters not. He who lives for the glory of God, has an end in view which lends dignity to the man and to his life. Bring common iron into proper contact with the magnet, it will borrow the strange attractive virtue, and itself become magnetic. The merest crystal fragment, that has been flung out into the field and trampled on the ground, shines like a diamond when sunbeams stoop to kiss it. And who has not seen the dullest rain cloud, when it turned its weeping face to the sun, change into glory, and, in the bow that spans it, present to the eyes of age and infancy, alike of the philosopher who studies, and of the simple joyous child who runs to catch it, the most brilliant and beautiful phenomenon in nature? Thus, from what they look at and come in contact with, common things acquire uncommon glory.

Live, then, “looking unto Jesus,” live for nothing less and nothing lower than God’s glory; and these ends will lend grandeur to your life, and shed a holy, heavenly lustre on your station, however humble it be. Yes. A man of piety may be lodged in the rudest cottage, and his occupation may be only to sweep a street, yet let him so sweep a street, that, through the honest and diligent doing of his duty, God is glorified, and men are led to speak and think better of religion., and he forms a link between earth and heaven. He associates himself with holy angels. And, though at a humble distance, treads in the footsteps of that blessed Saviour, who, uniting divinity to humanity, as our Maker made all things for himself, and, as our brother man, whether he ate or drank or whatsoever he did, did all to the glory of God; and doing so, left us an example that we should follow his steps. Go and do likewise. Glorify God, and you shall enjoy him. Labour on earth, and you shall rest in heaven. Christ judges them to be the men of worth who are the men of work. Be thy life then devoted to his service. Now for the work, hereafter for the wages; earth for the cross, heaven for the crown. Go thy way, assured that there is not a prayer you offer, nor a word you speak, nor a foot you walk, nor a tear you shed, nor a hand you hold out to the perishing, nor a warning you give to the careless, nor a wretched child you pluck from the streets, nor a visit paid to the widow or fatherless, nor a loaf of bread you lay on a poor man’s table, that there is nothing you do for the love of God and man, but is faithfully registered in the chronicles of the kingdom, and shall be publicly read that day when Jesus, calling you up perhaps from a post as mean as Mordecai’s, shall crown your brows before an assembled world, saying, Thus it shall be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour.